Bombing 'the beginning of the end' for Assad

Lateline is joined by Rami Khouri from the American University of Beirut and Andrew Tabler from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Transcript

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: We're joined now in Washington by Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of In The Lion's Den; An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria. He lived in Syria for much of the last decade and was co-founder of Syria's first private sector English language magazine.

And from Beirut, we're also joined by Rami Khouri, the director of Issam Fares - the Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. He is also a columnist for the Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon.

Thanks to both of you for being there.

We'll go first to you, Rami Khouri. What's the latest you're hearing, because this suicide bomber has struck at the very heart of Assad's power and the president's inner circle?

RAMI KHOURI, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT: Well, the latest we're hearing is that this part of a process that includes military movements and attacks around Damascus and other parts of the country simultaneously.

There is no clear indication of the response of the regime yet, but this is something that is quite extraordinary, and Assef Shawkat is a critical person, a critical target. For Assef Shawkat to be killed - he's like the heart of the heart of the regime in terms of military control and the security state apparatus that has been operating there for so many years.

So this is an extraordinarily important blow to the regime and my guess is that it will speed up the unravelling of the regime, because if the regime cannot protect its biggest, most important security officials who are ... not only security officials but members of the family that rule Syria, if they can't protect those people, then you know, if you're a soldier or a low-level intelligence officer or a Shabihah thug, you're probably going to be pretty worried, and people are going to start leaving the sinking ship pretty quickly now.

TONY JONES: Andrew Tabler that's obviously true. Assef Shawkat is the brother-in-law of the president. This group apparently is the same group set up by president Assad himself. It does lead one to wonder whether or not he might've been there?

ANDREW TABLER, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY: I don't think ... well, we have to wait and see what news pops out. This is a huge blow for the regime. I would just like to warn everyone that the regime has a lot of military and security resources. It has not used them until now.

What we could be seeing is, as Rami was talking about, rats leaving the sinking ship. But it is sinking - it just depends on at what rate.

Unfortunately what we could see is a regime which has tried to shoot its way out of this crisis for 18 months try to do it even more so. And we get closer to something like the events of February of 1982 in Hama, where there was a massacre that occurred.

I think it's very important now that the outside world, as well as Syrians throughout the world, send a very clear signal to Damascus that any kind of mass atrocity at this point is a red line and will be dealt with in a very direct way. And I think policy makers can be focused on this, as you said earlier in your report, the fact that we have chemical weapons now being moved around by the regime in the country makes this even worse.

TONY JONES: I will come to that in a moment, but how serious a blow is it to have lost, at the very least the defence minister, and Shawkat himself the brother-in-law? The interior minister and for other ministers to be critically injured. I mean, will this cut off the head of the regime, or are there enough people below them to continue the conflict?

ANDREW TABLER: Oh no, there are many people below them. And some of the people here, as Rami said, are core regime in terms of Assef Shawkat. The others not. They support the regime. But there are many other people who fill their ranks. We'll have to wait and see if this puts those supporters of Assad into the dilemma that Rami was talking about and forces him to choose between clearly a leadership which just doesn't get it and also doesn't understand what it has in front of us, politically or militarily - or do they stay with that, or do they run away?

TONY JONES: Rami Khouri, what do you think? Will this stiffen the regime's resolve or weaken it?

RAMI KHOURI: I think both. It will stiffen it in the short run. You will probably see some dramatic pushback and hitting back by the regime in vicious forms around the country as they've been doing already, but I think the real impact of this is it shows everybody in Syria, regime and opposition alike, that this regime is supremely vulnerable. It cannot protect its own top people. This is right in the heart of the city, next to critical government installations - and so if you can't protect your own people in this way, you're in big trouble.

And the critical loss of Shawkat is that this is a family-run clan-based government system. And as Andrew said, some of the other people are just loyal people; they're like people who serve with Ceausescu in Romania or the Shah in Iran, but the central family members who are the ones who are most trusted with the most critical positions, if they get knocked off now, then this regime I think is going to unravel pretty quickly.

TONY JONES: Rami, two groups are claiming responsibility for this, the Free Syrian Army and a breakaway Islamist group. Who do you think is the more likely to have done this, or could they have actually been working together?

RAMI KHOURI: I kind of doubt they would be working together. The last thing the Free Syrian Army wants is to be involved with any Islamist group who are generally ... these militant terrorist Islamist groups who are generally associated with al-Qaeda-type terrorism. I'm sure the Free Syrian Army is not involved in that.

It could be ... my guess is it's actually neither. I don't think a group like Liwa al-Islam could actually penetrate that inner circle, if it was done by one of the bodyguards. My guess is this was perhaps an inside job, as maybe other explosions around the country recently were done. So this is something that we can speculate.

The great tragedy of Syria and the modern era world is that you can name five or six plausible candidates, culprits for pulling this off - including Liwa al-Islam and the freelance terrorists, inside people, outside provocateurs - there's all kinds of potential candidates. This is the ugliness of these kinds of security regimes gone to the extreme.

TONY JONES: Andrew Tabler, Assad always refers to his enemies, all of them, as terrorists. Now the suicide bombing is a terrorist tool. A known terrorist tool. Is that going to create a kind of rhetorical argument that he can make to link everybody to terrorism?

ANDREW TABLER: Well, previously, Syria went through an uprising from 1979 to 1982, which culminated in the Hama massacre of February of '82. During that time, the regime did use an argument before society that there was a terrorist war waged by the Muslim Brotherhood at that time. And I think that the regime has continued to do that.

Now what makes it a bit different in this particular case is that this uprising is much more public in terms of demonstrations; and also I think there's also an understanding that at that time the regime simply had a better grip on the country politically especially, and demographically. This time it doesn't.

I think you will continue to see the terrorist narrative put out there. I don't think Syrians will buy that. They understand very well this is a battle between the opposition and the regime now, and the gloves are off, and I don't think this going to get any better any time soon.

TONY JONES: Rami Khouri, let's talk about the other side of this. Four days of fighting in the capital, in Damascus itself. Do you regard that as the major turning point so far in this conflict? That the rebels have been able to actually reach into the capital?

RAMI KHOURI: I think it's the second major turning point. I think the first major turning point in this conflict was in May of last year, 2011, when the body of a 13-year-old, Hamza al-Khateeb, was returned to his family, torture and mutilated after many days of torturing a 13-year-old kid. And that was the moment in late May when the uprising spread across many cities of Syria and created revulsion among so many people in Syria that they started openly challenging the regime.

I think this is the second turning point. To go into the heart of Damascus and to challenge the government to carry out these kinds of operations clearly sends an important message and it's mainly designed I believe ... they're not going to take on the Syrian army head-on, but this is designed to scare the daylights out of the Syrians, show vulnerability to everybody, to get the Syrian army and armed forces and the Shabiha dispersed more widely across the country, relieve pressure on Homs and Hama and other places - so I think this is a huge turning point.

It could go on for weeks and weeks and months. It's not necessarily going to happen tomorrow - the fall of the regime. But this is certainly the beginning of the end I think.

TONY JONES: Andrew Tabler do you agree with that? I mean it's a pretty critical phase when a regime has to turn tanks out and artillery and mortars in its own capital?

ANDREW TABLER: For sure. I mean, I think now we're looking at a situation, though ... I mean, the question is ... the regime is very heavily armed. It has a lot of resources. It costs it politically to do that, but the fear factor is still there.

What's very interesting is the response of the international community. Over time, Assad has pushed and tested every so-called red line with the West. First it was shelling, then helicopter gunships; now it's moving chemical weapons around the country - we're not exactly sure why, maybe to safeguard them, maybe not - and to look at the international response, and I think it's here where you can see that UN inaction ... by being locked up at UN, which has locked up the political process that Kofi Annan heads, which could've been useful months and months ago but now is increasingly less so because the situation's accelerating out of control.

I think it will be very interesting to see: does president Assad understand that he must not create another mass atrocity like he did in February of 1982, in which 10 to 30,000 people died? And that to me is crucial here in these 24 hours.

TONY JONES: You mean like his father did? We'll go to Rami Khouri there ...

RAMI KHOURI: Let me just add, if I could just add to that ... I would disagree a bit with Andrew on this. I think the international community - the UN, the Americans, the Europeans, even the Russians to an extent - are pretty irrelevant right now.

What we've seen now is the almost total inability of the international community to do anything, and the Syrian Free Army and the opposition have pretty much given up on that. So I think this is now purely an internal battle.

Just as the Egyptian people who took to the streets and the Tunisians finally brought about a process of transition, which Western intervention and [inaudible] probing tried to do, completely failed to do it - the same thing here.

This is purely now an indigenously-driven process of change, and the world lost its opportunity to get involved early in a serious way - maybe because the Security Council is a difficult instrument to use, but we have to really look inward now.

TONY JONES: Rami Khouri, sticking with you for a moment - Andrew Tabler there was forecasting the possibility of a really extreme reaction from the regime, including the use of chemical weapons, or the possible use of chemical weapons. This warning has come now from several sources, including US officials. What do you make of it?

RAMI KHOURI: Well, I doubt they will actually use chemical weapons. These are thugs. They're killers. They've used mass killings in Hama and other places in the past; they've used the most brutal techniques. I doubt they would use chemical weapons.

What they would do is probably use a more concentrated form of unleashing the Shabihah, these Alawite gangs, and they would carry out atrocities. But I think they would stay away from using chemical weapons because they understand what that means - what it means is probably the Russians would immediately turn against them and drop them completely. So I don't think chemical weapons are gonna be an issue now.

TONY JONES: Andrew Tabler, do you agree with that? And does the Syrian regime really have these huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that we've been hearing about?

ANDREW TABLER: Oh certainly they do. That's not even a contested fact of the Soviets and then later the Russians and other parties helped them develop them. That's well known.

Look, I agree with Rami. I don't think they're going to use them very easily, and I think they will be reticent to do so but the question is: how to ... I think this is what the international can do.

It is true, it is an indigenously-driven uprising. It has been from the beginning. What the international community can do is issue a very stern warning to Assad that use of these materials is going to bring about a very rapid response - whether it's militarily, diplomatically, or via the ICC about whoever's responsible for using them - because this is a regime that's going to be increasingly desperate.

We want to make sure that that signal is there. Otherwise I fear that we expose the Syrian people to that possibility of their use in an even greater way. I hope it doesn't happen. I don't think it will happen very easily, but I think now as we're looking at the regime coming apart, we need to very coldly assess what this regime is capable of.

Bashar al-Assad's regime is not like his father's. Bashar al-Assad is a very erratic, unpredictable individual. His father was much more calculating. And I think we can expect the worst from Bashar al-Assad, not the best. That's his track record.

TONY JONES: Andrew, I'll stick with you for a moment. Let's talk about briefly will Brigadier-General Talas, the defector from the military - I think the highest combat commander to defect from the Syrian regime. He's now in Paris. He was a Sunni. He is a Sunni, which is quite significant. What can you tell us about him?

ANDREW TABLER: Manaf Talas was co-commanding a Republican Guard battalion. He is someone ... the son of the former defence minister. He knows how the regime is wired. He's not core of the regime, though. That's mostly populated by Alawites - members of the Assad family who hail from that sect, and others. He knows how the place is wired. He knows how the military's structured. And Manaf Talas and others like him can play a key role in some sort of possible transition government as the country moves towards elections in the future.

Now, it's not going to be, I think, like in Egypt or Tunisia or even Yemen, where it's just within the existing government. It will probably be a combination of some in the existing government, but also many from the opposition, because of the way this is tipped.

So I think he and other military Sunnis play a key role going forward, as we take a minority-dominated system and it moves towards a majority-dominated one, and I think that Manaf Talas will play an increasing role. The opposition has not accepted him very easily - the protesters. That's not a surprise. They don't accept many people who leave, actually. But it will be interesting to see if the regime and the Free Syrian Army do. So he's a figure to watch.

TONY JONES: Rami Khouri, do you agree with that, essentially? I mean it's obviously a Sunni leaving the military - does throw a bit of a cloud over all the other Sunnis who are holding high posts. One wonders whether there may be some sort of backlash against them?

RAMI KHOURI: I don't agree with the whole sect-based analysis of Sunni and Shiite and Alawite. Of course this is an Alawite minority thug regime, we know that, but the transition won't be as same as the past. The future is going to be different than the past.

I agree with Andrew that Sunni military people ... it's going to be important to deal with people who can maintain the security system and the armed forces in place so it doesn't have a situation like we had in Iraq after the Anglo-American criminal invasion of Iraq. But you need to deal with people in the armed forces, including some of them who are Alawites and others.

I think the sect-based analysis is completely irrelevant. What you have to deal with here is people who will be judged by whether they were involved in real command positions - who were involved in massacres and in real brutal actions - and others who were not involved in those things.

So a lot of Syrians of different sects who will remain in the system and be part of the transition. I think class is completely ... my guess is he will be completely unacceptable to the system, to the next government. I doubt he would be brought in.

TONY JONES: We're nearly out of time. I just want to go to both of you to finally sum up where you see this going, and whether you fear that we could have the kind of result that we had in Lebanon during the civil war, or Iraq after the invasion and the aftermath of Iraq of a total sectarian breakdown? Rami Khouri clearly doesn't think so. Andrew, what do you say?

ANDREW TABLER: Yes, I think that we need ... I think it's very clear that even if the regime starts coming apart, it all depends on what does the fall of the Assad regime mean? Does it mean that he tips over? Yes, but it could take some time when that finally happens.

Also, there could be a lot of fighting in the meantime - and then what comes after him, the transition, could be longer than expected - and then what comes after that? So this crisis in Syria, I think, will go on for years and years in one way shape or form, but today's developments were major turning points in that crisis, and it will be very interesting to see everyone's choices inside the Syrian regime and out in the coming week.

TONY JONES: Same question to you, Rami. I guess we could also add since you're in Lebanon, do you fear this conflict spreading over the border?

RAMI KHOURI: Well, it has already spread over the border a little bit, and I don't think it will spread more than that. Lebanon doesn't need people from outside to instigate people to fight with each other. They have enough reasons in Lebanon to fight with each other, unfortunately.

But the reality is that it will spill over a little bit into Jordan, into Iraq, into Turkey, into Lebanon but limited ... the Arab people are not stupid enough to allow themselves to be pushed into civil wars by thuggery in neighbouring countries.

I think the Syrian regime, as Andrew said, is extremely full of capabilities, weapons, hundreds of thousands of people - but so was the Shah's regime, so was Ceausescu, so was Marcos. These regimes fall very quickly. The minute there is loss of confidence in the ability of the regime to stay in power, the whole thing collapses very quickly - and I think this is what's going to happen to Syria.

Whether it happens in the coming month or three or four months down the road, I think this is going to happen for sure - including the collapse of the economy which has been going on slowly - the desertion of top-level people, and most importantly the opposition is taking coal of patches of land in the country where they can do logistics and training and other things.

And so I see this process of fighting going on for some time, but I would say within a couple of months there will be a turning point and then the transition will be quick - because we've seen other Arab transitions, including Iraq and Libya after wars, and we know now what has to be done. And the opposition is working very hard now over time to put in place a transition plan that avoids the worst of what happens in other countries.

TONY JONES: Gentlemen, we will have to leave you both there. We thank you very much, Rami Khouri and Andrew Tabler. Thanks to both of you.

ANDREW TABLER: Thanks.

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